For more information please go to http://www.cwu.edu/engineering/first-robotics

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CWU Student Creates Revolutionary Text-to-Speech Reader

Spencer Graffe, a senior in Central Washington University’s Computer Science Program, has developed Central Access Reader (CAR), a free computerized text-to-speech reader program that has attracted attention of institutions across the nation.

The program, developed as a tool to assist students with print-related disabilities—those with visual impairments, dyslexia, attention-deficit disorder, or other conditions—reads documents that other text-readers can’t handle, especially those with equations or symbols.

The program started as a computer science class capstone project. Central Access, CWU’s department that makes educational materials accessible to people with disabilities, hired Graffe to continue to work on the program after the project ended. The Central Access Reader has attracted the attention of schools across the country. In recent weeks, Marshall Sunnes, Central Access program coordinator, has received inquiries about the program from numerous institutions, including MIT and Harvard.

In addition to an intuitive user interface and simple customizations, the program is able to read documents that contain symbols from geometry and trigonometry, linear algebra, calculus, math, logic, or statistics. Sophomore Justin Wilson, another computer science major, refined its math-reading abilities. The powerful, yet simple, interface allows the user to customize how the text looks and sounds.

Central Access serves not only the university community, but also provides materials to institutions and schools across the country. Central Access leads the industry in offering accessible products, including electronic text, Braille, and tactile graphics.